The Bahai World Marks Its Centenary With the Publication of God Passes By

On 23 May 1944, the Baha'i world marked the centenary of the Bab's 1844 declaration of his mission in Shiraz, already recorded here, with the publication of Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By, twenty three years after his own appointment as Guardian of the Faith in 1921, also recorded here, and seven years before the Mother Temple of Africa opened in Uganda in 1951, also recorded here. Communities around the world held centenary observances that year, including a devotional gathering in Foundation Hall beneath the still unfinished House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, the North American community's administrative center since the Faith's early expansion into the United States. God Passes By became the Faith's single authoritative narrative history, carrying its account from the Bab's declaration through Baha'u'llah's ministry and his 1868 exile to Akka, already recorded here, to 'Abdu'l-Baha's leadership and Shoghi Effendi's own guardianship, and describing the founding period as one in which, in his words, above ten thousand heroes laid down their lives, with the movement as a whole, cumulatively, consecrated by the sacrifice of no less than twenty thousand martyrs. Cambridge University Press's independent academic history of the Faith treats the centenary and Shoghi Effendi's historical writing as the point at which a persecuted messianic movement out of Qajar Iran had consolidated into a faith with an elected international administration, a turning point its own communities still mark today.